ALT Image shows the cover of 'Where the Folk: A Welsh Folklore Road Trip' by Russ Williams. The cover shows a myriad of different colourful illustrations of the creatures and figures found in the book....

ALT Still, what’s this about a banshee? Rhod told me that he had heard stories about the lane when he was growing up: ‘That road, well, the whole of Mynydd Meio, really, is said to be haunted by a female spirit called “Shinny”. She’s said to appear either as a crippled old woman asking for help or as a seductive “femme fatale” type of thing. You should be alright as long as you ignore her and keep on walking, but stop and engage with her and she’ll chop off your head. They say she used to wash decapitated heads in a nearby stream.’

ALT Image shows the cover of Nightshade Mother by Gwyneth Lewis which has a deep purple background and features an illustration of a nightshade plant tangled around the title.

ALT In this extraordinary memoir, Gwyneth Lewis, the inaugural National Poet of Wales, recounts her toxic upbringing at the hands of her controlling, coercive mother. It is a book that Gwyneth has been preparing to write all her life, keeping diaries since childhood. In these journals, she interrogates the emotionally abusive relationship she experienced, in great pain but determined to find a way through. Nightshade Mother is a book that Gwyneth co-writes with her younger self, an unexpected and life-saving dialogue through time. Metaphors of haunting intensity help her confront what happened to her; quotations from art and literature guide and steady her. This is a book about the power of art, language and, ultimately, about homecoming over a lifetime of exile from herself. It is a profoundly moving and beautiful work; questing, forgiving and loving in its approach.